FAA and Regs

With pilot friends like this, who needs Comedy Central? The pilot of an experimental RV-6 in Michigan told a friend to get to the beach and watch for his flyby. As promised the sleek two-seater buzzed at 100 feet, made three passes—one is never enough—pulled up in a steep turn, stalled and hit the water, […]

Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., has announced he is no longer pursuing the separation of air traffic control from the FAA. After a couple of attempts and massive opposition from hundreds of groups with a stake in aviation, Shuster,House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman, conceded Tuesday his bill doesn’t have the support to pass. “Despite an […]

The $100 billion that has been proposed in the federal budget to fund the privatization of air traffic control should be spent on modernization and technology upgrades instead, nearly 250 advocacy groups said in a letter to Congress (PDF) released on Tuesday. The groups represent not only aviation advocates but also labor unions, consumer groups […]

News site Axios is reporting that President Donald Trump is promoting his longtime personal pilot as the next administrator of the FAA. Quoting unnamed administration sources, Axios, a relatively new news service made up mainly of ex-newspaper staff, said John Dunkin, who flew Trump’s personal Boeing 757 during the 21-month campaign, has been interviewed and […]

For more than 20 years, administrations on both sides of the aisle have proposed some form of ATC privatization for reasons ranging from ideological purity to hoped-for cost savings and increased efficiency. There was never hard evidence to support the savings and efficiency argument, despite the FAA’s historic snail-like speed in accomplishing major revisions to […]

Call them ramp fees, facility charges or handling fees. When you pull up to manyFBOs there’s a good chance you’ll be billed a flat-rate charge just for taking spaceon the ramp. In general, the larger the aircraft, the more you’ll pay. Most facilitiesthat collect facility fees will waive them if you oblige by buying a […]

The morning fog rolled across the airport like a vast cotton blanket, smothering runways, parked airplanes and the airport terminal. Within minutes, it pushed up against the tower windows, trying to seal us inside like something out of Stephen King’s The Mist. We quickly flipped on the airport beacon and cut a new ATIS reflecting […]

The FAA is reminding helicopter operators that they must use certified gear when conducting “human external cargo operations” — that is, transporting humans via a harness slung beneath the aircraft. This form of travel is fairly common for workers who inspect power transmission lines and towers that otherwise would be hard to reach. “Operators are […]

A Wall Street Journal editorial last week said it would be a good idea to privatize the air traffic control system, and singled out the opposition by NBAA and AOPA for critique. “What’s really going on,” the WSJ editorial board says, is that the business jet industry pays just 0.6 percent of aviation user taxes, […]

Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) has certified the Pipistrel Alpha Electro in its advanced ultralight category, the first certification of an electric aircraft in North America. The certification means the aircraft can be used commercially in its intended role as an economical trainer. Electricairplanes can’t qualify for the factory-built light sport category (S-LSA) because FAA […]